It's with considerable trepidation that I greet the news of a new Eastside Hockey Manager release; on the one hand, it's a fantastic game, and the new design looks pretty sharp, but on the other, I have a job, writing projects, and drinking habit, all of which EHM will distract from.

For those not familiar with the game, it's based on SI Games' popular (soccer) Championship Manager series, in which you, uh, try to manage your team to the championship. Graphics are basic -- photos of the players, team logos, and a bunch of circles running (skating) around during game play. It's addictive as hell.

Much as I love the classic video games, EHM is so much more satisfying for me -- the challenge of building a team, the joy of discovering a diamond in the rough (sometimes an unrealistic one; in an older version of the game, Pardubice's Jan Kolar could be turned into a regular 35-goal NHL scorer, and you could trade, say, Mike Danton for Jaroslav Balastik and watch Jaro score 45 goals a year for the next four years), the level of detail (I've had players leave the team in anger, and develop personal problems -- Anton Volchenkov did the first, Theo Fleury and Jes's buddy Balastik again for the second).

I've been playing EHM since it was shareware, and it's become considerably more difficult, which is good. In the shareware days I quit playing as the Avalanche because the five straight Stanley Cups got dull. In the three (I think?) years since SI Games started selling it, I've only managed two championships -- a Thrashers Stanley Cup win and a Ceske Budejovice Czech Extraliga win. With the most recent version, I pretty consistently missed the playoffs in the NHL, and was happy with a third-place finish in the Extraliga.

I think some of my favorite features are gone from the new version -- it looks like they no longer have rights to the Extraliga, which sucks, and means the teams will, presumably, be generically called "Prague," "Zlin," whatever. Also, I'm guessing poor Tomas Kloucek will no longer have the talent levels of a top-two NHL defenseman. Still, I'm pretty stoked to get it. Let's hope for lots of rain in Atlanta over the next few weeks, so I have an excuse to stay in.